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----------------- [ x ] Dragomir lingered in the temple grounds, where snow drifted like ash across the old flagstones—soft, silent, and devoid of grace. He sat alone with the steel and the whetstone, working a blade he hadn’t drawn in weeks. But it wasn’t about the weapon. It was about the rhythm. The hush inside the rasp of stone on metal. Something to bleed thought into. Something to do while grief pressed in around the edges. The blade itself was useless. He’d known it from the first strike—off-balance, hairline fractures in the tang, brittle as bone in winter—a mistake left too long on the rack. A waste. The word came again, low and final, like a bell buried in snow. It was what the night had been. What the gathering had become. What the confrontation left him with. The fury was long gone, burned up in the moment and scattered in the silence that followed. What remained was not peace. Peace would have been mercy. This was the aftermath. Still, cold, and unkind. The memories were fresh, yet shrouded in a veil of emotion and choked with the fabric of woeful pity that made him forget some of the details. They weren’t courteous, he remembered that. They had no reason to be, because their knights sat around and did nothing. The commander did not gawk beyond his lie of repercussion that he swore would fall. The insults had missed him and landed on the still-warm corpse instead. Dragomir hadn’t answered most of it. The taunts, the sneers, the sharpened jabs meant to goad—they passed through him like wind through ruin because grief had already taken him elsewhere. It had its claws in him even then, turning his thoughts toward vengeance, while something else sank its fangs into him and demanded that he look toward the woman Louis had loved. She needed a sword. Louis’ sword. That was his purpose, even if he felt himself give way to some of the provocation. He remembered the priest. The words returned with fragments: the sly smile, the twisting tone, the performer’s cruelty wrapped in piety. Beneath the vestments, just another lean-mouthed jackal gnawing on the dead to feel nourished. He spoke so few words, and yet it was he who had the weapon. It had been the shepherd who seemed reluctant to return something. That one spoke too casually, as if he had never faced the strangling silence. He hadn’t felt the loss of someone whose name still hung in his throat like an unfinished prayer. He was a hypocrite, like Dragomir. Maybe that was why the Norn laughed. He’d laughed throughout it all—a rough, hollow thing. Laughter as a weapon. Laughter as a wound. It hadn’t been rage in the chortle, but regret. He’d now sat there in his armor and silence, a man carved out of anger and built again with scars, and still he had wept. Not where most could see, no—but it had come all the same. When no one else watched, when the fire was low, the names of the dead were always louder than his heartbeat. He was not always a kind man; he never had been. Brave, yes. Loyal, in ways that broke and yet remade him. Hate has always been easier. Easier to grip. Easier to swing. And yet even that had cracked just as stone does when the frost gets deep enough. The fury had drained from him hours ago, bled dry by the blade now chipped and thin from a whetstone that stuck to his palm so much that it made the calluses drool. Now, only calm remained—heavy and unnatural, like the false quiet that follows a scream. Dragomir was the one who screamed. He screamed when he sharpened the blade. He screamed when he had delivered Louis’ head the night before. He screamed when he broke into meetings to quietly ask if something had been done. He had, even if his voice did not carry outside the room. And that was why it was quiet. At some point, the sword had fallen to the floor, and the palms of that scarlet-haired man slapped against the sides of his skull and his eyes. This emotion was a first for him. Raw and hateful in its way. Dawn was bleeding through the sky, pale and weak, a ghost of morning. Snow fell again, light and aimless. The stave church creaked in the wind, its bones murmuring. The fire was almost out, no more than embers beneath grey ash. Still warm, but fading. Just like his brother’s soul.
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[ Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ Oɴᴇ ] [ Chapter Two ] [ x ] "You must pardon me, Dragomir," Thalandir said. His voice bore no shame, only the weary honesty of a man who had long since made peace with what he was. "My swordsmanship is cloddish. I studied the technique of the Black Knight, and learned from…” Thalandir paused as if he recalled a vivid memory—one of the countless millions that swam through the wizard's consciousness. “… And my master, before he was taken. Both of them… their techniques were crude." The wizard’s lips twitched with either disgust or discomfort. From Dragomir's view, Thalandir stood like a statue raised in defiance of time—taut, carved muscle bound beneath robes whispered in arcane tongues. Veins like roots traced his arms, visible beneath silver skin aged not by years but by power. His sword, a hand-and-a-half relic, caught the faintest glint of stormlight. It hummed. Dragomir stepped forward, and the air came alive. The Norn’s armor was no mere steel—it was the death-hide of a wyvern, still mottled with the bruises of battles long since burned into memory. As he moved, the scales sang. A soft rustling like a wind in spring leaves. A sound as ancient as the bloodlines they both bore. "Crude?" Dragomir repeated, his hammer swirling lazily at his side. The dark hammerhead cut circles through the air, an artist's brush waiting to strike canvas, and the flame erupted over the top. Golden threads pursue the white, winding around the shaft towards the leather-bound grip, adhering to the edges like sacred text inscribed in fire. "In what way?" His voice was even and measured. Beneath the surface, a simmering rage burned; a cancer within remained dormant. The embers of resentment were still smoldering. Thalandir kept pushing forward without pausing. The wizard did not answer with words. His sword spoke instead. He lunged with all the brutal grace of something between a storm and a beast. There was no flourish, no parry-first feint. The wizard's strike was a straight, savage line aimed at Dragomir's midsection—a strike that any knight would scoff at. Yet to Dragomir, whose blood carried the echo of Nornish thegns and death-drinking berserkers, it was not without beauty. "They swung without thought," Thalandir murmured as if he were narrating history, not combat. The weapon was the quill, which sought the ink flowing in Dragomir's veins. Dragomir moved instinctively, the shield coming up in a twist and redirecting the blade. The blade's edge was caught in the rim with a shriek, but the wizard had overextended. The hammer came for the shoulder. Any normal man would've buckled off the fear of high-density volatite crushing their limbs and breaking their muscles. But Thalandir did not. He moved like he knew the secrets of the world. A thunderous crack echoed in those heavenly halls when his left fist slammed into the hammerhead—knuckle met volatile force, heightened by something inexplicable. Something elemental. T H U ' U U M The impact sang through Dragomir's body, running up his arm and into his shoulder like molten steel. A pained groan preceded the faltering of footing, boots scraping the stone, but he did not fall. The hammer thrums in the aftermath with tasteful violence, lights sparking up and flashing against Dragomir's frame while the weapon was still bathed in holy flame, as if sanctified not to cleanse—but to punish. It felt like the- The wizard did not need to seize the opportunity. He was already advancing to attack Dragomir. One breath of surprise from the Norn gave Thalandir enough time to curl his arm and strike again. The cobwebs in the centuries between the time he had sworn never to pick up a blade were disintegrating into powder. They moved in tandem—strike to arm, counter to the hammer, this counter to follow the other one. The sword slipped free of the shield’s rim, screeching as it dragged the Nyxium away. The shield swung wide. Then Dragomir lunged, wrist catching the elder’s boot and causing the hammer to be sent flying away from the Norn’s gauntleted fingers that now only curled as hungry claws. Thalandir's robes hissed with rising steam, static blooming like pollen before a storm. The impact of the hammer against one pillar rang like a bell, shattering stone columns nearby. Winds burst outward, peeling the clouds apart overhead. "Do not lose yourself," Thalandir warned, and even if he had not meant it like a taunt, it was treated like any other. But Dragomir was already eager to feed the hate that swelled from within. He felt the muscles of his neck snap while adrenaline continued to pour into his veins. A vessel had burst in his eye, and even his throat. He hacked up some slobbery mess that was sent along the inside of the bent metal around his face. The howl tore itself from his throat, animal and raw. A mighty blow from the shield cracked against the wizard's jaw; a weaker man's bones and teeth would've shattered. But Thalandir only smiled. He had been knocked off, practically falling over from this bash. Blood welled up from his lip, the cut as clean as a ritual. And he struck back. His fist hooked and caught the rim of Dragomir's shield and slid—knuckles slamming against scaled armor—pain, sharp and sudden. But Dragomir fed on pain. Let it fuel him. His core was rising with the stolen flame of divinity, the cancer unfurling itself within him. Imbalanced, unlike Thalandir. Mindless, where the wizard was not. Dragomir surged forward again. The axe lacked the righteous flame of Mikjáll, but was wrought of an impossibly sharp alloy: carbarum. Another strike could be had—another chance to end it. But Thalandir's blade spun, not to cut, but to bludgeon. It caught Dragomir's helmet like a comet striking the mountainside. The left wing of the visor tore free. Blood streamed from the nasal guard as cartilage ripped against metal. The Norn staggered, fury and pride fighting to keep him upright while his senses screamed for retribution. He spat with rage and thrust the topspike against the wizard’s core. C L I N K The carbarum dulled, and Thalandir’s lips writhed into a proud and leering curl. It was so sudden that Dragomir's anger even flickered like a torch in the wind, his gaze dropping perilously. And then Thalandir slammed his sword down again into the shield, crashing against the metal. Downward. Purposeful. As if executing a divine rite. Dragomir staggered—but did not fall. Not yet. Not until Thalandir conjured the spear. It shimmered in his hand—a weapon forged from light and the breath of the immaterial. He aimed it, not with haste, but with reverence. This was no duel now; this was judgment. Dragomir leaped with his shield, the axe still in his hand. His blood ran hot in his mouth as he frothed like a Jötunn driven from its cave, envisioning how he might tear into Thalandir. The sting of past mistakes fueled his resolve; a burning resentment, a furious determination drove him to this new scheme. The shield caught the spear's tip—and for a fraction of a second, he thought he might win. Then came the pain. The spear shattered the shield rim. Its sharp head carved through armor and flesh, lodging deep into Dragomir’s gut. His heels skidded on the stone. The light in his eyes dimmed. And he was sent flying, muscles tearing from the force of the impact that slammed him into the ground. The impact drove the spearhead into the ground. The heavens rumbled—the clouds around the library swirled and swam against the forceful impact that was dealt to this ad-hoc arena within the library. Dragomir did not cry out. He could not stomach a breath. "You have fought excellently," and there it was again—that serene, venerable thunder. It was not boisterous or indignant, just heavy with a truth you did not quarrel with. It was not like Dragomir, who lay there struggling to choke with lungs that declined to even so much as squirm when crisp air sailed into his rib cage from the rippling edges of his wound. A desperate, soundless scream drowned Dragomir, his throat raw and useless, as he clawed at the suffocating darkness. Without sparing a second thought, Thalandir called the sword to him, reached for the spear embedded in Dragomir, and yanked it free. A guttering sound came from Dragomir's mouth—half roar, half death. Blood gushed now, a curtain torn open. Something ancient rose in the wizard’s throat; words and whispers swam out into blue, gold, and silver lights that swept into the bleeding man. The carved flesh and hanging entrails began to heal themselves, the clots in his throat strangling him for a few moments more. Darkness coiled at the edges of Dragomir’s mind—shadows like claws, anger like armor. Fury and madness intertwined, a draconic scream echoed from within his helm. He saw the lights, the fire, the pain of it all, and then it was siphoned out. A sputtering clarity that blinded Dragomir’s whole senses. Wounds are healed, the scars greyed over into lines that would never fade. "You humble me, Dragomir.” Had that been sincerity? Relief was a scathing thrill for Dragomir as the old magic worked miracles against his damaged frame. He felt it all over, his legs and arms twitching and spasming like a newborn experiencing its first breath in the frigid air of the north. Thalandir did not look surprised; the Dragaar looked down, not with pity- —but with admiration. ᛐᚱᛅᚾᚴᛦ
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Erebus bowed to the crowd, facing the applause of fists thudding against bare chests. The deactivated crozius in his hand was flecked with blood – first blood – and ever the dignified victor, Erebus offered a hand to help Skane up from the deck. The sergeant took the proferred hand, gripping it with his new augmetic limb.
‘A fine bout,’ the First Chaplain said.
The World Eater still hadn’t had his throat mechanics repaired, leaving him speechless, but he grinned and nodded in place of words, and moved back into the crowd.
Delvarus stepped forwards. So did Khârn. The crowd, on the edge of cheering at the first warrior, fell silent at the sight of the second. The captain said two words to the Triarii centurion.
‘Let me.’
Delvarus saluted and backed away.
‘First blood?’ Erebus asked.
The axe in Khârn’s hand was Gorechild, toothed by mica-dragons and once thrown from the hands of a primarch. He’d chained it to his bare wrist in imitation of the Nucerian gladiators, whose bones he’d seen and honoured mere days before at Desh’elika Ridge.
The captain was stripped to the waist, as were all the warriors present.
‘Sanguis extremis,’ Khârn said. Some of the crowd breathed in, showing their shock as the humans they once were. Others laughed or cheered. More fists beat against chests.
Erebus regarded Khârn with cold, composed eyes. Several seconds beat in silence, before the Word Bearer’s lips curled in a soft, indulgent smile.
‘Bold, Khârn. Are you s–’
Gorechild revved for the first time since its rebirth, eating air with the throaty snarl of an apex predator. That interruption was the only answer Khârn would give, and Erebus raised his crozius in reply.
‘Come then.’
Three blows. The first: Khârn smashed the maul aside with the flat of his new axe. The second: he cannoned a headbutt into Erebus’s nose, breaking cartilage with a wet crunch. The third: Gorechild tasted first blood, ripping across the Chaplain’s chest, carving a canyon of flesh over the dense subdermal armour of the warrior’s black carapace torso implant.
All of this happened in the time it took Erebus to blink. No one could move as fast as Khârn moved. No one human, and nothing mortal. The Chaplain threw himself backwards, crozius up high to guard.
Khârn walked forwards, gunning Gorechild’s trigger. The crowd was silent now. This was a Khârn they’d never seen – not even on the field of battle.
Another three blows, delivered with the same blinding speed. Erebus’s maul clang-skidded across the deck; he took a fist to the throat and a boot to the stomach, knocking him back with enough force to send him crashing onto the bloodstained iron grillework. He looked up at Khârn from the ground and saw his death in the World Eater’s eyes. He’d never seen this before, not in any of the paths of possibility. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t end like this. He was Destiny’s Hand.
Khârn looked down at him, clearly allowing time for the Chaplain to recover his crozius.
‘Get up.’
Erebus rose, his mace in his hands again. He attacked this time, showing the speed and skill that had allowed him to hold his own against Lucius of the Emperor’s Children, and Loken of the old Luna Wolves. His crozius trailed killing lightning, buzzing furiously as it thrummed through empty air again and again. Khârn weaved aside from every blow, quicker than a blink, surely quicker than muscles could ever allow. Their weapons crashed together. Khârn had parried the last blow. Erebus expected accusation in the World Eater’s eyes, or surely anger. He saw neither. Worse, he saw a bored indulgence. The captain even sighed.
Three more blows. Erebus was on the deck before he knew how. Pain flared across his chest, hot and urgent, matching the thick throb of his smashed face. He reached to touch the wound with a hand that was no longer there.
His hand. His hand was on the deck, several metres away. Blood leaked from the chewed veins nestled in the meat of his severed limb. Turning unbelieving eyes downwards, he saw where his arm now ended at the wrist.
‘Going to need an augmetic for that,’ Kargos said from the crowd. Several warriors laughed, but few with any real relish. They were too fascinated by what was unfolding.
Erebus looked up at Khârn again. He was just waiting.
‘Get up.’
The Chaplain rose. Khârn didn’t wait this time – the blows were bloody blurs of whining motors and tearing chain-teeth. Pain bloomed across Erebus’s body, and he was face-down on the deck again before he’d managed to fully rise from the last time. Even without his armour’s pain nullifiers and chemical stimulants, Erebus suppressed the pain by whisper-chanting a sacred mandala. Khârn interrupted it.
‘Get up.’
Erebus actually tried, but he froze when he felt Gorechild’s teeth against his spine. The idling chainblade was purring and breathing out its promethium fuel-stink, the axe’s stilled teeth kissing Erebus’s vertebrae.
Never, not even in fragmentary glimpses, had he foreseen this duel.
It couldn’t end like this. He couldn’t die here. There was so much to do. Signus Prime. Terra herself. In all the Ten Thousand Futures, Erebus had seen himself fighting the Long War to the very last.
The very same second Erebus reached for the ritual knife at his belt with his remaining hand, Khârn pulled the chainaxe’s trigger.
There should have been a scream. Everyone expected it. Every warrior present waited to hear the First Chaplain of the Word Bearers shriek as Gorechild bit into his flesh. But there was nothing beyond the rotating whine of an axe blade chewing empty air.
No one seemed surprised at the display of Word Bearers sorcery. Even fewer were surprised at the cowardice.
Khârn turned from the blood marking the deck, leaving the circle without a word.
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And in the days following Draco's sacrifice, Bowen and Kara led the people in a time of justice and brotherhood. As I remember it now, those were golden years warmed by an unworldly light. And when things became the most difficult, Draco's star shown more brightly for all of us who knew where to look.
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Those who try to hasten the end, may delay it.
Those who work to delay the end, may bring it closer.
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"Captain," the wounded warrior voxed. "I can’t move."
Gharte had no legs below his mid-thighs – Khârn couldn’t begin to guess where they were in this sea of mangled corpses – and his chest was a ruin of violated breastbone and ceramite.
"Bide," he said, lowering the warrior’s helm. "Kargos will come."
The warrior gripped Khârn’s collar with weak fingers. "The Nails are aflame, even now." He coughed something wet into his helm. "How can that be? I’m dying, and they still sing? What do they want from me?"
"Bide," Khârn said again, though he knew it was useless.
"Just give me the Peace." The warrior sank back to the ground. "Seventy years of serving the Butcher and his Nails is long enough."
Khârn wished he’d not heard those words. Discomfort danced its tingling way down his backbone.
"You served well, Gharte." Khârn disengaged the seals at the warrior’s throat, lifting the helm clear. There wasn’t much left of the sergeant’s face. Something must have reflected in Khârn’s expression, for Gharte made his devastated face into something like a grin.
"That bad, eh?" he asked. His gurgling laughter became another cough.
Khârn’s reply was solemn obedience. He held the gladius above Gharte’s left eye, its point a finger’s breadth above the dilated pupil.
''Any last words?’'
"Aye. Piss on Angron’s grave when he finally lies dead."
Khârn wished he’d not heard those words, either.
He rammed the blade down, with the sound of dry twigs breaking beneath a boot, and the faintest clink of the point striking the stone under Gharte’s head.
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[ Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ Oɴᴇ ] [ x ] I 16th of Svensmánaðr, IAÁ 550, Age of Dragonfyre. Blinded by majesty. That is the best way to articulate how and what Dragomir felt when the Heavens tore apart, when the weavings of what he had brought to that cursed fortress-monastery showed themselves as bearing fruit, and when the clouds above warped, hissed and unfurled into a wicked inferno after those glyphs spelt out damnation in the forbidden tongues etched into the air. Chaotic consistency. A prevailing maelstrom of steel and bodkin on the earth below. It irritated him, piercing through that self-sustaining hatefulness that always simmered like an angry furnace, fuming and churning the coals of his heart and belly while keeping him warm in these climates. It had enraged him to be condemned to merely stand by and utilize a great piece of artillery rather than see the foe and move to charge and swing. A task. An objective that demanded his focus, his unwavering vitality. Dragomir felt an unusual cold. It wasn’t like the chill of stepping into wintry air and inhaling the frost still hung in the winds and sleet. It was a cold that sparked his resentment for the tundra for the first time in years. This cold made him feel solitary and exposed. Why? Unsteady ground. A ferocious pull of the rock and frozen earth, buried under the snow piled so high. The warriors fought bravely, and it was in the moments following the striking of a necromancer and a few of his brood that he realized what had troubled him so profoundly. They had taken so much time to try to reach him. To try and stop the plans set into motion. To charge the battlements raised by his Oyashimen companions and that of one of the Brotherhood, to challenge the iron will of the Purifiers of his kingdom. To try and break the souls and corrupt those of Mulnaar. They had taken their time. Why? Scorching leather. A burning sensation rippled along his right arm as the obelisk crumbled and clattered into dust, sending him crashing into the palisade. He was fed up. Eager to charge, he summoned his horse and allies, advancing towards the portcullis, feeling the familiar thrill that usually accompanied facing an enemy’s attack. So many more warriors had finally revealed themselves at his door. So many had emerged from their holes to charge and challenge him. To teach him something new. II A scream. The scent of iron lingered in the air, mingling with the sweat and ash of the campsite where they’d committed to the siege. So close to the gates, so near the foes—those same bastards who had slain his companions in the southern states, who had maimed, tortured, corrupted, and committed such grotesque acts in the name of their atheistic pursuits. A cold hatred consumed Dragomir before he realized the inevitability of Danzen’s truth. They were within the radius of the downpour; for all Dragomir wished to do was charge the fools ahead of him; he could not abandon the others and be damned as well. Someone waited for him, far away from here. A shout. Hooves rumbled against snow, dirt, and frosted rock, kicking up and knocking loose the sturdy formations. It was not a glorious withdrawal, at least not in his eyes. From where he stood, he and Tancred surged back into the camp to rally others and rescue them from harm’s way. Ghouls fled, skidding along the ice and slush that gathered around the moat and the rest of the walls from their brutal melee with the other warriors. He witnessed the filth of GRENDEL slither and writhe in opposite directions from him and his own. Some appeared determined to fight to the end; they would battle to their last breath. They grappled with one another in the snow and bitter mud that slid from the warm bodies as they moved forward with their soles, unleashing their alchemy, arrows, and weapons. Strained muscles. The tearing of maille and plate and meshing of souls, as the last whispers of a dying amalgamation crumbled into the moat of Lumbridge. He had acquired the master architect, seizing her by the collar and hoisting her over the saddle as Sweetpea trudged. She galloped, hooves snuffing out the life of a shambling skeleton that had begun to crawl from their pit. Another beast succumbed, cursed by Fate to be impaled on the spikes in the trap below. He heard cries, galloping hooves, and then nothing. The sound was gone – his ears had stopped working. His lungs, too, he noticed. He struggled to yell, as there was no air, and staying calm felt impossible when everything around him was so tense. III An avalanche. A catastrophic collision of brawn and sorcery. A particular beauty was ascribed to the horror that drew Dragomir’s gaze back from the ridge—a righteous, brutalist awe that thawed his coldness and nearly brought the furnace of his heart to a standstill. White and grey lightning crashed into the stronghold’s structure as the last survivors fled the tundra. The earth shook everywhere, a distant ridge appearing to split in tandem with the magma that spewed silver fire. Dragomir could not flee—he was frozen. A spell had been cast upon his senses, and he did not attempt to resist it. That fortress was gone, and all the homes and cursed stones that he and his tribe had toiled for decades to strike down were not merely obliterated—it was gone, utterly gone. Smoldering snow. A blistering patchwork of malice and cosmic correction. Clouds loomed and swirled around the peaks, obscuring the path of those who had gone before. Dragomir stood alone, gazing at what was left of that dreadful place. One scar upon the soil had now been replaced by an even deeper one, with the crumbling slopes serving as a testament to the Xionist filth that once cultivated their cancerous grip along the edge. It was beautiful, even with the volcanic pulse that unravelled against the terrain. He could ignore the lingering burns of his arm and the cold that looked like it was trying to freeze him in retaliation for what sorcery the snow now suffered because of him. He grinned at this, and let the arrogance pour into his throat. He made a chuckle that never once sounded off. A sigh and a heave of his chest fell with such tremendous and utter disbelief. Dawn had been wrought unto Lumbridge, and he was its herald. IV Dragomir hadn’t realized he was speaking to a black and grey pile of rubble when all that truly settled in. He had been forging as his arms and hands burned with the sparks of his furnace that danced against his flesh, sizzling into the ripped sleeves of his shirt, and fought so fiercely against the leather to reach him. He wasn’t even looking at the hot metal to which the prongs were connected, and he realized this when the throbbing pain of the GODSHAMMER’s aftermath reached his wrist and ached along those fresh scars shaped like lightning. Dragomir realized he had shared this story with a severed helmet at the top of that mound; the dark metal was devoid of the head and spirit that once gave it life. It emitted an eerie odor that annoyed his nose. Which one had this foe been? Thirteen? No, that had been the half-rotten Uruk who clawed at his helmet earlier. His hand was trembling. Why? It constantly trembled slightly whenever he swung a hammer. Whether it was his beloved Sefa that he crashed against countless foes, or the plain and comely Vala, the Narvaukiaan Bronze hammer he now wielded in his smithy, the effect was the same. A muscle shook wrongly, and he felt one of the nerves shudder against him as though he was suddenly feeling the aftermath of using his high-density warhammer. But he wasn’t. He had been forging, he had been alone, and he had been cold. No, worse than that. He was vulnerable, and every insecurity mixed with their maddening sensations reminded him. A sense of weakness, his mind told him as he set down the prongs and the star-shaped ingot of steel against his anvil. The metal steamed out, its warmth slowly dying as it was strangled by the cold air wafting in from the smithy’s open door. The left hand reached for that trembling limb, wrapping around the wrist and gliding the thumb along the side of his thumb. This happened in moments, with the odd little fidgeting drifting away like some phantom that had grown bored with its host. The fingers flexed before curling in once more to crack the knuckles, and he stepped away from the anvil to fetch a cloth to wipe at the sweat of his arms, hands, cheeks and brow. Dragomir was unaware of the metallic trophy of the fallen warrior. He grasped it in his right hand and brought it along as though it had been a companion for the road. Fingers drummed against it anxiously, matching the beat of his heels and feeding his brain a sense of calm. Upon entering the village square, he paused, feeling the biting cold against his skin. Blue eyes stung as sweat and soot combined with the chill of his Hearth, prompting him to reflect on his choices. He envied the great, bearded elders whose woollen braids enveloped their throats and extended down to their chests during such frigid moments. They would have known how to handle this. They would have been able to endure this and so much more. They wouldn’t have felt so fragile and bitter like me, he lied to himself. Boots grind against cold earth and gravel calmly while a tempest of thoughts rolls thunder along the inside of Dragomir’s skull. Each rumble brings up another muffled voice to tell him something he can’t comprehend. But he believes he might be able to outmanoeuvre his vulnerability by travelling. ᛐᚱᛅᚾᚴᛦ
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The one thing war stories always forgot was the dust. Khârn learned that early, and the lesson stayed with him through the years. Even two men kicking up sand in the gladiator pits was a distraction. Two armies of a few thousand souls on an open plain would turn the air thick enough to choke on. Scale it up again, and a few hundred thousand warriors locked in conflict would darken the sun for a day after the battle was done.
But the realities of pitched warfare rarely made it into the sagas. In all the stories he’d heard, especially those woeful diatribes from the remembrancers, battle was reduced to a handful of heroes going blade-to-blade in the sunlight, while their nameless lessers looked on in stupefied awe.
It took a great deal to make Khârn cringe, but war poetry never failed.
Two Legions fighting through a city was beyond anything else. Tank engines exhaled fumes in an oil-smelling smog. Gunships roared down on heat blurs and air washes, while those shot down fell from the sky to crash and roll across the ground as burning husks. Titans striding through the streets bled fire and smoke in equal measure – wounds that gouted pollution tenfold when one of the colossal war machines finally died.
The tens of thousands of soldiers grinding rockcrete and earth beneath their tread, and the last sighs of habitation towers bursting their dusty innards into the air as they came apart – they all added to the pall. Each spire that fell, every monument that toppled, every bunker that broke apart breathed a cloud of strangling ash in every direction.
Fighting in a ruined city was one thing, but fighting during a city’s ruination was quite another. Visibility was a myth. It simply didn’t exist.
In ages past, when bronze swords had formed the pinnacle of humanity’s capacity to wage war against itself, mounted scouts tore through a battlefield’s dust clouds to relay information and orders between officers whose regiments were blinded in the thick of it. That was another truth that rarely survived to make into the archives.
War had come a long, long way from those ancient days. Mankind’s capacity to fight blind had not. Khârn’s retinal display responded to his irritation, auto-cycling through vision filters. Thermal sight was a worthless smear of migraine colours when half the city was aflame. Tracking by echolocation auspex was unreliable with any atmospheric interference, and the dense clouds of particulate coupled with burning buildings all around most definitely counted as suboptimal conditions.
He didn’t stop running. He had no idea where he was any more, but he didn’t stop running. When in doubt, move forward. The old adage brought back his grin.
Khârn remembered the landing. The teeth-rattling descent in the Dreadclaw’s dark confines, and the burst of sunlight that followed when the pod’s doors blasted open. He remembered that first charge out into the city, pulling his weapons free, feeling the wasp-stings of lasgun fire failing to pierce his armour plating. They’d come down in a barracks district, amongst the entrenched battalions of Armaturan Academy Guard. Young warriors undergoing the process to become Ultramarines, alongside the hosts of uniformed, disciplined soldiers that were proud to serve the XIII Legion.
Damn Guilliman and his empire within an empire. Armatura, the war-world, was merely one globe in the Five Hundred Worlds. How did one man raise such vast armies? How did one Legion command such might?
He knew the answer, unwelcome as it was. Here was the gift of an unbroken primarch. Here was an unflawed genius at play, unburdened by a pain engine. While Lorgar wasted time with the mysteries of the aether and Angron tasted blood from his malfunctioning mind, Guilliman of the Ultramarines had reshaped an entire subsector into the Imperial ideal. Not even Horus had managed that.
A bolter shell had severed his irritated musing, crashing against his chestplate and throwing his stride into a ragged stagger. Khârn had roared without realising – an instinctive vocalisation of the pain drilling into the back of his head – and charged into the first platoon of Academy Guard holding the barricade at the road’s end. Their Evocatus leader fought with an energised gladius, proving himself a swordsman of consummate skill. He lasted nine seconds before he collapsed, painting the avenue’s stones red with his innards.
The city was still standing at that point. The dust hadn’t had a chance to occlude everything under the sun.
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[ x ] 26th of Thoromirsangr, IAÁ 547, Age of Dragonfyre. The journey was straightforward: a short hike to the smoldering ruins of Belvedere, where neither had witnessed the great battle. It seemed foul and decayed to Dragomir, with the taste of ash blending with a fog that carried an aura of devastation over the bittersweet remains of chaotic glory. This was one of the few moments when that Norn could find comfort, free from the relentless nagging of the other Southron, devoid of the clattering of their teacups, and the hissing, self-loathing leers that always appeared when an outlander approached. A lycanthrope had led the pair that way, or at least what had been the report of one. Adalwin's brother had fought in this battle, had regaled it to him, and had cherished a period where he was not present. The admiration only befitting one who adored their kith and kin in such manners. While listening to the story, Dragomir had cleansed at least two small altars of GRENDEL, snuffing the flames of the final one as Adalwin's words sound off. The Reinmaren warrior's arms folded before himself, and he rose from the perch he had sat himself upon. "… That concludes the story of the false monastery, Belvedere," the man-at-arms had said. "… Though I forgot one important detail. The man who had been mentioned to have been slain earlier this Saint's Day- he had fought in this battle, too." The words reminded him of the motivation behind why that beast had been hunted in the first place. It had torn apart one of the other Southrons, joining forces with another group of GRENDEL that had attacked the city of Kretzen that same evening. Dragomir had visited after the Cardinal completed his rites, and it was at his suggestion that the two warriors set out that way. "It renders this loss even more tragic, I would argue," Adalwin added, too. With the flames of that final altar extinguished, the usual chill of the western tundra permeated the room. It seeped through the tiny cracks of the splintered glass, filtering between the stains from torches that had attempted to cleanse that wretched place. "And why is that?" Dragomir asked, his winged visor tilted some. "Knowing that he was not given a fair fight in his last moments, despite his good deeds in life," Adalwin elaborated there with a roll of a hand, stepping over near that altar. "… Swarmed by several enemies and being able to take none with him." Dragomir's visor turned back to gaze at one of the faded murals, observing its cracked and chipped visage and how it mocked the woman it was intended to honor and dedicate itself to. The devils had chosen this place wisely before they were ousted by their own hand. "Is that not more honorable, tthan to effortlessly skewer ten foes with a thousand allies?" The cadence of that Drengr's voice was contemplative as he countered the fellow warrior's thought. Adalwin paused, nodded, and pursed his lips as he glanced to the side of that ruined hall. He did not outright dismiss Dragomir's words. Not yet. "Ich suppose so. His sacrifice did allow others to escape mostly unscathed, after all…" A hand reached for his chin, scratching the skin under his jaw. It was a brief gesture that showed he was considering what he heard. "The death-throes of a horde carry more merit to them, I should think," Dragomir elaborated, seeing the other man's curiosity flourish. In truth, the words of his tribesmen had come out: Hrungnir, especially. Leif. And even Birkir rambled about these things countless times before. "… A man standing defiant against insurmountable odds, holding his shield and sword even if fear was pumping through his veins. It was a slaughter, no doubt. He likely did not even truly wound the foes that sought to rip and tear him. It was indignant that he landed no final strike, perhaps," and Dragomir's tongue paused. His hammer lifts, and he gestures toward the side with his favored weapon. "Yet," Dragomir said. The weapon was stowed in the belt after, ruffling against the hide and maille he donned. Adalwin's right brow arched, still standing there with his arms crossed. Just as Dragomir had been so enthralled with his story of the battle's recollection, Adalwin displayed further interest in the mentality of the Sólvikingr. "He saved the lives of others. He knowingly threw himself up in harm's way, knowing it was futile. Sins do not matter in those moments. Nor the miracles. Nor the steel one carries, or the loved ones whose warm arms shall go cold on that night when the inevitable happens." A free palm clenched its digits against the leather around its calloused skin, straining the material of a weathered gauntlet. "It was humanity at its purest." In the moons to follow, he would later realize that Haakon had spoken those words. Adalwin grinned but shared with Dragomir a respectful nod of his own. "Norlandic philosophy? I think I can get behind those thoughts," and he reached forward to pat Dragomir's shoulder. Dragomir's words to follow had been his High Keeper's. "ALL-FATHER bids his sons and daughters to stand ready against the darkness; this is no easy task. It is not without sacrifice." A weary sigh followed, and even with the lesson being articulated aloud in that dilapidated hall of the demonfolk, Dragomir still felt the bitterness of the Shadow looming around him. "… And for some, sacrifice may even entail a most undignified death." They had parted ways with one another after that. It was the first and only time that the two ever conversed with each other to last more than a few seconds. Three years had passed since that interaction that he had. And it was a conversation that Dragomir thought about often.
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‘Why?’ was all Ehrlen could ask.
‘I don’t know,’ said Tarvitz, wishing he had more to tell the World Eater.
‘This wasn’t the Isstvanians, was it?’ asked Ehrlen.
Tarvitz wanted to lie, but he knew that the World Eater would see through him instantly.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t.’
‘We are betrayed?’
Tarvitz nodded.
‘Why?’ repeated Ehrlen.
‘I have no answers for you, brother, but if they hoped to kill us all in one fell swoop, then they have failed.’‘And the World Eaters will make them pay for that failure,’ swore Ehrlen, as a new sound rose over the crackle of burning buildings and tumbling masonry.
Tarvitz heard it too and looked up in time to see a flock of World Eaters’ gunships streaking towards their position from the outskirts of the city. Gunfire came down in a burning spray, punching through the ruins around them, boring holes in the black marble of the ground.
‘Hold!’ shouted Ehrlen.
Heavy fire thudded down among the World Eaters as the gunships roared overhead. Tarvitz crouched at a smashed window opening beside Ehrlen, hearing one of the World Eaters grunt in pain as a shell found its mark. The gunships passed and soared up into the sky, looping around above the shattered palace before angling down for another run.
‘Heavy weapons! Get some fire up there!’ yelled Ehrlen. Gunfire stuttered up from the gaps in partially collapsed roofs, chattering heavy bolters and the occasional ruby flare of a lascannon blast. Tarvitz ducked back from the window as return fire thundered down, stitching lines of explosions through the World Eaters. More of them fell, blown off their feet or blasted apart. One World Eater slumped down beside Tarvitz, the back of his head a pulsing red mass. The gunships banked, spraying fire down at their position.Tarvitz could see the World Eaters zeroing in on them as they flew back towards their position. Return fire lanced upwards and one gunship fell, its engine spewing flames, to smash to pieces against a burning ruin. Tarvitz could see dozens of gunships, surely the whole of the World Eaters’ arsenal. The lead Thunderhawk dropped through the ruins, hovering a few metres above the ground with its assault ramp down and bolter fire sparking around the opening.
Ehrlen turned towards Tarvitz.
‘This isn’t your fight,’ he yelled over the gunfire. ‘Get out of here!’
‘Emperor’s Children never run!’ replied Tarvitz, drawing his sword.
‘They do from this!’No Space Marine could have survived the storm of fire that blazed away at the interior of the gunship, but it was no ordinary Space Marine that was borne within it.
With a roar like a hunting animal, Angron leapt from the gunship and landed with a terrible crash in the midst of the ruined city.He was a monster of legend, huge and terrible. The primarch’s hideous face was twisted in hatred, his huge chainaxes battered and stained with decades of bloodshed. As the mighty primarch landed, World Eaters dropped from the other gunships.Thousands of World Eaters loyal to the Warmaster followed their primarch into the Choral City, accompanied by the war cries that echoed Angron’s own bestial howl as he charged into his former brethren.
It had been said that a Space Marine knew no fear. Such a statement was not literally true, a Space Marine could know fear, but he had the training and discipline to deal with it and not let it affect him in battle. Captain Saul Tarvitz was no exception, he had faced storms of gunfire and monstrous aliens and even glimpsed the insane predators of the warp, but when Angron charged, he ran.
The primarch smashed through the ruins like a juggernaut. He bellowed insanely and with one sweep of his chainaxe carved two loyal World Eaters in two, bringing his off-hand axe down to bite through the torso of a third. His traitor World Eaters dived over the rubble, blasting with pistols or stabbing with chainblades.
‘Die!’ bellowed Captain Ehrlen as the loyalists counter-charged, throwing themselves into the enemy as one. Tarvitz was used to Astartes who fought in feints and counter-charges, overlapping fields of fire, picking the enemy apart or sweeping through his ranks with grace and precision. The World Eaters did not fight with the perfection of the Emperor’s Children. They fought with anger and hatred, with brutality and the lust for destruction.And they fought with more hatred than ever before against their own, against the battle-brothers they had warred alongside for years.
Tarvitz scrambled back from the carnage. World Eaters shouldered past him as they charged at Angron, but the butchered bodies lying around showed what fate awaited them. Tarvitz put his shoulder down and hammered through a ruined wall, sprawling into a courtyard where statues stood scarred and beheaded by the day’s earlier battles. He glanced behind him.
Thousands of World Eaters were locked in a terrible hurricane of carnage, scrambling to get at one another. At the centre of the bloody hurricane was Angron, massive and terrible as he laid about him with his axes.
Captain Ehrlen crashed down a short distance from him and the World Eater’s eyes flickered over Tarvitz before he rolled onto his back and pulled himself to his feet. Ehrlen’s face was torn open, a red mask of blood with his eyes the only recognisable feature. A pack of World Eaters descended on him, piling him to the ground and working at him as though they were carving up a side of meat.
Volleys of bolter shots thudded through the walls and the battle spilled into the courtyard, World Eaters wrestling with one another and forcing bolters up to fire point blank or disemboweling their battle-brothers with chainaxes. Tarvitz kicked himself to his feet and ran as a wall collapsed and a dozen traitors surged forward. He threw himself behind a pillar, bolt shells blasting chunks of marble from it in concussive impacts. The sound of battle followed him and Tarvitz knew that he had to try and find the Emperor’s Children. Only with his fellow warriors alongside him could he impose some form of order on this chaotic fight.
Tarvitz ran, realizing that gunfire was directed at him from all angles. He charged through the ruins of a grand dining hall and into a cavernous stonewalled kitchen.He kept running and smashed his way through the ruins until he found himself in the streets of the Choral City. A burning gunship streaked overhead and crashed into a building in an orange plume of flame as gunfire stuttered throughout the ruins he had just vacated and Angron’s roaring cut through the din of battle.
The magnificent dome of the Precentor’s Palace rose above the battle unfolding across the blackened remains of the city.
As Tarvitz made his way through the carnage towards his beloved Emperor’s Children, he promised that if he was to meet his death on this blasted world, then he would meet it amongst his battle-brothers, and in death defy the hatred the Warmaster had sown amongst them.
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With a roar like a hunting animal, Angron leapt from the gunship and landed with a terrible crash in the midst of the ruined city. He was a monster of legend, huge and terrible. The primarch’s hideous face was twisted in hatred, his huge chainaxes battered and stained with decades of bloodshed. As the mighty primarch landed, World Eaters dropped from the other gunships. Thousands of World Eaters loyal to the Warmaster followed their primarch into the Choral City, accompanied by the war cries that echoed Angron’s own bestial howl as he charged into his former brethren.
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‘You stand on difficult ground, Zarha. I am a Chaplain of the Adeptus Astartes, sworn into my position with the grace of the Ecclesiarchy of Terra. In my presence, you have just expressed the notion that the Emperor of Mankind is not your god, as He is for the entire glorious Imperium. While I am not blind to the… separatist… elements within the Mechanicus, the fact remains that you are speaking heresy before a Reclusiarch of the Emperor’s Chosen. You are speaking heresy, and I am charged with the responsibility of ending any heresy I encounter in the Eternal Crusade. So let us tread carefully, you and I. You will not insult me with false accusations of blasphemy, and I will answer the questions you have regarding D-16 West. This is not a request. Agree, or I will execute you for heresy before your crew can even soil themselves in fear.’
I see her swallow, and despite herself, her smile shows her amusement.
‘It is entertaining to be spoken to in this manner,’ she says, almost thoughtful.
‘I can imagine that your perceptions offer a much grander view than mine,’ I meet her optic augments with my own gaze. ‘But the time for misunderstandings is over. Speak, Zarha. I will answer what you ask. This must be resolved, for the good of Helsreach.’ She turns in her tank, swimming slowly in the fluid-filled coffin before eventually coming back to face me.
‘Tell me why,’ she says. ‘Tell me why you have done this.’ I had not expected such a base question.
‘It is the Ordinatus Armageddon. It is one of the greatest weapons ever wielded by Man. This is a war, Zarha. I need weapons to win it.’ She shakes her head.
‘Necessity is not enough. You may not harness Oberon on a whim, Grimaldus.’ She floats closer, pressing her forehead to the glass. Throne, she looks tired. Withered, tired and without hope. ‘It is sealed now because it must be sealed. It is not used now because it cannot be used.’
‘The Master of the Forge will determine that for himself,’ I tell her.
‘No. Grimaldus, please stop this. You will tear the Mechanicus forces on the world apart. It is a matter of the greatest import to the servants of the Machine-God. Oberon cannot be reactivated. It would be blasphemy to use it in battle.’
‘I will not lose this war because of Martian tradition. When Jurisian accesses the final chamber, he will examine the Ordinatus Armageddon and evaluate the trials ahead in awakening the spirit within the machine. Help us, Zarha. We do not have to die here in futility. Throne of the Emperor, Oberon would win us this war. Are you too blind to see that?’ She twists in the fluid again, seeming lost in thought.
‘No,’ she says at last. ‘It cannot, and will not, be reawakened.’
‘It grieves me to ignore your wishes, princeps. But I will not have Jurisian cease his ministrations. Perhaps Oberon’s reactivation is far beyond his skills. I am prepared to die with that as an acceptabletruth. But I will not die here until I have done all in my power to save this city.’
‘Grimaldus.’ She smiles again, looking much as she did at our first meeting. ‘I am ordered by my superiors to see you dead before you continue this course of action. This can only end one way. I ask you now, before the final threats must be spoken. Please do not do this. The insult to the Mechanicus would be infinite.’ I reach to my armoured collar and trigger the vox-link there. A single pulse answers – an acknowledgement signal.
‘You have made your third mistake by threatening me, Zarha. I am leaving.’ From the pilots’ thrones, voices begin to chatter.
‘My princeps?’ one calls.
‘Yes, Valian.’
‘We’re getting auspex returns. Four heat signatures inbound. From directly above. The city’s wallguns are not tracking them.’
‘No,’ I say, without taking my eyes from Zarha. ‘The city defences wouldn’t shoot down four of my Thunderhawks.’
‘Grimaldus… No…’
‘My princeps!’ Valian Carsomir screams.
‘Forget him! We demand orders at once!’ It is too late. Already, the chamber starts to shake. The noise from outside is muted by the Titan’s immense armour plating, but remains nevertheless: four gunships on hover, their boosters roaring, black hulls eclipsing the moonlight that had beamed in through the eye-windows. I look over my shoulder, seeing the four gunships align their heavy bolter turrets and wing-mounted missiles.
‘Raise shields!’
‘Don’t,’ I say softly. ‘If you try to raise the shields and prevent my attempt to leave, I will order my gunships to open fire on this bridge. Your void shields will never rise in time.’
‘You would kill yourself.’
‘I would. And you. And your Titan.’
‘Keep the shields down,’ she says, the bitterness returning to her visage. Her bridge crew comply, reluctance evident in their every movement and whispered word. ‘You do not understand. It would be blasphemy for Oberon to enter battle. The sacred war platforms must be blessed by the Lord of the Centurio Ordinatus. Their machine-spirits would be enraged without this appeasement. Oberon will never function. Do you not see?’ I see. But what I see is a compromise.
‘The only reason the Mechanicus is not committing one of its greatest weapons to the war to save this world is because it remains unblessed?’
‘Yes. The soul of the machine will rebel. If it even awakens, it will be wrathful.’ Within these words, I see the way through our stalemate. If their rites require a blessing that is impossible to give, then we must alter our demands to the most basic, viable needs.
‘I understand, Zarha. Jurisian will not reactivate the Ordinatus Armageddon and bring it to Helsreach,’ I tell her. She watches me closely, her visual receptors clicking and whirring in poor mimicry of human expression.
‘He will not?’
‘No.’ The pause lasts several heartbeats, until I say, ‘We will remove the nova cannon and bring it to Helsreach. It is all we needed, anyway.’
‘You are not permitted to defile Oberon’s body. To remove the cannon would be to sever its head or remove its heart.’
‘Consider this, Zarha, for I am finished with standing here and posturing over Mechanicus banalities. The Master of the Forge was trained on Mars, under the guidance of the Machine Cult and in accordance with the most ancient oath between the Astartes and the Mechanicus. He reveres this weapon, and counts his role in its reawakening as the greatest honour of his life.’
‘If he was true to our principles, he would not do this.’
‘And if you were true to the Imperium, you would. Think on that, Zarha. We need this weapon.’
‘The Lord of the Centurio Ordinatus is en route from Terra. If he arrives in time, and if his vessel can break the blockade, then there is a chance Helsreach will see Oberon deployed. I can give you no more support than that.’
‘For now, that is all I need.’ I thought that would end it. Not end it well, by any means. But end it nevertheless. Yet as I walk away, she calls me back.
‘Stop for a moment. Answer me this one question: Why are you here, Grimaldus?’
I face her once more, this twisted, ancient creature in her coffin of fluids, watching me with machine-eyes. ‘Clarify the question, Zarha. I do not believe you speak of this moment.’ She smiles.
‘No. I do not. Why are you here, at Helsreach?’ Strange to be asked such a thing, and I see no reason to lie. Not to her.
‘I am here because one who was brother to my dead master has sent me to die on this world. High Marshal Helbrecht demanded that one Templar commander stay to inspire the defence. He chose me.’
‘Why you? Have you not asked yourself that question? Why did he choose you?’
‘I do not know. All I know for certain, princeps, is that I am taking that cannon.’
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